Shad fishermen fight for Delaware River hatchery

Shad fishermen fight for Delaware River hatchery

By Vic Attardo, On the Outdoors

Though bright and shiny, American shad are pulling a disappearing act in East Coast rivers. Some sportsmen want a hatchery to replace the missing. Photo by Vic Attardo

When the migratory run of American shad begins advancing up the Delaware River in a few weeks it will be a sure sign that this long winter is behind us. The shad's spawning ritual is so much a part of our history and cultural that a flower is named after the fish and the species has been credited with saving the starving patriots at Valley Forge after the winter of 1776-77.

But all is not right for the shad. After surviving its severe decimation with the damming and pollutions of East Coast rivers, the fish is now threatened by overfishing and perhaps by one of its piscatorial cousins, the striped bass.

According to the Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC), a governmental agency which regulates ocean species along their inland passage out to a three-mile limit, shad populations along the East Coast are "currently at all time lows and do not appear to be recovering."

ASMFC identifies the "primary cause" for the continued stock declines as a combination of "excessive total mortality, habitat loss and degradation, and migration and migration and habitat access impediments."

For the record, ASMFC does not cite two causes which many shad anglers feel are the main culprits: commercial overfishing and the resulting mortality with bycatch netting (killing shad when other fish are actually the target) and the predatory striped bass whose population ASMFC states is "in good conditions … with overfishing not occurring." Indeed the resurgence of striped bass along most of the Atlantic coast has been one of the great success stories of the last twenty years.

Not show the American shad, and the River herring.

In February ASMFC issued a plan for the American shad calling for a "coastwide commercial and recreational moratorium, with exceptions for sustainable systems." ASMFC is willing to grant exemption for water systems that demonstrate that a recreational and commercial fishery "will not diminish the potential future stock, reproduction and recruitment" of shad.

The ASMFC plan, which is Amendment 3 of the Interstate Fishery Management Plan, also allows for any state or jurisdiction to keep their waters open to a catch and release recreational fishery. Similarly those without an approved management plan in place by Jan. 1, 2013, will be closed.

The Delaware River Shad Fishermen's Association, (DRSFA), the lead sportsman's group on the issue, hopes there will no such closure on the tri-state river. They point to pronouncements by the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission that the Delaware River has a sustainable shad population.

Indeed, the last thing the DRSFA wants is for shad fishing to end on the river. What they do want, among other things, is the construction of a hatchery on the upper Delaware expressly dedicated to the raising of shad fry for planting in the Delaware.

The DRSFA is pushing hard for a hatchery but it has not been an easy sell. In fact, the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission questions if a hatchery would solve the problem of declining adult shad numbers.

According to the PFBC, there is no biological or ecological data to support the stocking of shad fry where there is a strong naturally reproducing population, such as the agency exerts is found in the Delaware River. The PFBC maintains there is already "an abundance of wild juvenile shad" in the Delaware River and that "juvenile abundance is not the problem."

"Continued declines in adult populations in most East Coast rivers despite strong juvenile recruitment suggest the problem is mortality in the ocean," the PFBC's Bureau of Fisheries Director, Leroy Young, told the shad sportsmen in a lengthy response.

In refuting the need for a river hatchery, Young says there is a "weak correlation" between juvenile abundance in a river following a spawning run and the return of adult fish several years after their oceananic maturity.

"Good juvenile recruitment has little impact on adult returns four to six years later," notes Young.

In other words if a hatchery were to add scads and scads of little shad to the Delaware River, it would not necessarily result in an abundance of adult shad during a later spawning run.

To bolster their case, the DRSFA maintains that shad, and herring, populations on the Delaware River "have reached critical levels."

In a letter written by DRSFS secretary Dave Bittner to the PFBC's Delaware River biologist Daryl Pierce, the sportsmen criticize what they see as a lack of effort to enhance the shad population in the Delaware River.

Bittner asks why no shad were stocked in the Delaware River last year but were planted in the Lehigh and Schuylkill.

In coordination with the ASMFC, the PFBC has reduced the recreational creel limit for shad to three and says further reductions are possible based on future ASMFC actions.

The DRSFA also wants an equitable spending of resources for the Delaware River.

"(We must) work to level out the extreme funding allocation discrepancy between the Susquehanna and Delaware rivers," wrote Bittner, "$20,785,000 for the Susquehanna vs. $222,499 for the Delaware."

The PFBC maintains that funding is based upon the needs of the fishery resource and not on angler use or license sales.

"The Susquehanna River is a system that is not restored and not self-sustaining. The Delaware River is inhabited by a self-sustaining, reproducing shad fishery whose populations currently appear to be limited by events occurring once the fish leave the river system and inhabit ocean waters," said director Young.

Reading between the lines, no one is denying that shad fishing on the Delaware River could evolve into a total catch-and-release fishery.